It turns out the Armoire is your mother: Narratives of addiction in two cable television organization programs

Abstract

An ideological analysis was conducted of two cable television programs which offer strategies on how to organize the “stuff” accumulated by individuals: Clean Sweep, which airs on the TLC cable channel, and Clean House, which airs on the Style cable channel. Both programs send in energetic team of experts to help couples identify and dispose of items that they believe (and the couples agree) are negatively impacting their lives. The assumption emerging from these programs is that the unbridled passion of the guests for accumulation – of collectibles, and of just plain “stuff” – has begun to damage their lives. Rather than simply help these individuals get rid of what they no longer need, these programs sustain an ideology that suggests that the individuals who appear on these programs are addicts, desperately in need of a nationally televised intervention.

• Addiction
• two cable television channels
• stuff
• individuals